random fem.men.isms

Lately, the hits on my blog have been going off the map again. Hits from all over the world. And when i track a good portion of them, its a lot of folks doing a google image search for the iconic picture above, which is featured in my post Nostalgia For The Gender Fluid 80's. It turns out that my blog comes up in the top 4 google image search options from simply typing "Grace Jones."

I must confess, Grace Jones is probably the only entertainer whose boots i would kiss if she asked me to. I believe that she is one of the most important women to come out of Jamaica, whilst being a fierce culture onto herself. The diva of divas.

And if you DON'T know, she has a new album out. Its called Hurricane, and it has collaborations with Sly and Robbie, Tony Allen (Fela's drummer), Brian Eno and Tricky. Miss Jones reports loving Massive Attack, and you can hear it. Rootsy Sly and Robbie riddims move through cryptic neo-dubby sounds, rock, soulful ballads, moody electronica and dancehall referencing tunes like "This Is" which kicks off the album with her declaration "This is my voice, my weapon of choice."

If you are looking for something new and interesting, i would highly recommend the latest works of the 60 year old (fabulous looking!) Jamaican preacher's daughter. I love the pics in the album too!

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While we are paying homage to and supporting strong Jamaican women- please support my amazing sister! She is making moves to cause much needed change in Florida (and you KNOW we need more progressives in office in FL!), and also stands to be the only non-white person to ever be on the Sunrise Commission. Elections are March 10th, its the home stretch. Please forward info about her to anyone you know in Florida, and contribute if you can! Thank you! More about her: http://www.votewrightmuir.com/

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Prop 8 reaches the Supreme Court AGAIN. The verdict will be given March 5th, this Thursday. Luckily, Gov. Shwarzenegger can't vote to disenfranchize folks this time cuz of some legal loophole (Its a "resolution". Why its being voted on at all tho..) The National Center Of Lesbian Rights has an ongoing online rally that everyone can join. Support the overturning of Prop 8!

Also of note in this struggle for equality is that the NAACP has issued statements in support of overturning Prop 8. Yay! Maybe its just me, but i get really happy when big black organizations endorse gay rights. Lets smash stereotypes together, shall we?? Ain't nobody free till we are all free, and NAACP is talking the talk. If you are so inclined, you can thank the NAACP on their Facebook fan page. Looks like they have been getting a lot of love :)

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Following that, i thought i'd close out this posting potpourri with the acceptance speech from Sean Penn for Best Actor in "Milk". To date, this is the only bit of the Grammy's i've seen, which i am pretty fine with :) I hope all the Grace Jones fans stumbling onto this blog appreciate these other fem.men.isms!

Alameda County Joins Growing Lawsuit Against Prop 8

Good News!! reposted from Chris Metinko's article in the Oakand Tribune:

The Alameda County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday agreed to join San Francisco and Los Angeles counties in a lawsuit asking the state's high court to void Proposition 8 on the grounds that voters did not have the authority to make, what they claim, is a revision to the state's constitution.

Prop. 8, which passed with 52 percent of the vote earlier this month, overturned the state's Supreme Court's decision in the spring which legalized gay marriage. The measure changes the constitution to limit marriage to that only between a man and a woman.

The suit, which also has been joined by Santa Clara County, claims any measure is not merely an amendment to the state's constitution, but rather a major revision and should therefore have had to pass through the state Assembly and Senate before going to the voters this November.

Its going down y'all.

Reportback From The Oakland No On 8 Protest.

Wow. I'm just recovering from co-organizing this rally. I have to give mega-props to fellow organizers Monifa Porter, Lawrence Ellis, Maya Scott-Chung, Carrie Leiser-Williams, Jen-Mei Wu and special props to Natalee Kehaulani, Molly McKay, Michelle Rodriguez, Aimee Suzara, Xiaojing Wang, Chelsey Oda, Ruth Villasenor, Sapana Doshi and Tracey Osbourne for all the support, behind the scenes work, and documenting (awesome pics Natalee! check here to peep the beauty!). So much love and respect also going out to those who delivered an uplifting, essential performance. And much love to everyone who showed up, and all who support this cause in any way!

This was really difficult to get together, with zero time for outreach (i still have so many flyers leftover!!) so we are thankful that it actually had a really good turnout!! There was a point in the organizing process where we came up against a huge obstacle. The name of that obstacle was unconscious racism. Without naming anyone, i will say that two queer white men (not listed above) who did a lot of work to procure the permits, and get some high profile politicians to sign on... also then proceeded to feel a sense of ownership over the process, and was expressing their unconscious racism by not wanting to "allow" people of color from Oakland communities to represent on the mainstage. Yes, we are taking about Oakland! They felt that they "couldn't be racist" because they invited Congresswoman Barbara Lee & Mayor Ron Dellums (who didn't show unfortunately). As a straight ally, i didn't feel like i could get all up in their face about how effed up their politics were. This really could have turned into a protest of the mostly poc organizers against a whitewahed rally in Oakland, with a separate stage of people more represenative of Oakland. But in the end, we actually came to a compromise. And it became a micrcosm for the work that has to be done to move forward into positive Change. So despite differences of vision and consciousness, and across lines of race, privilege and sexuality... we worked it out, and shared the stage and had a beautiful program.

There was so much that happened. The Two Spirit-Drummers created sacred space by opening and closing the event with the sacred ceremonial drum Two Eagles, which had been made by Two-Spirit/LGBT Native elders. We heard from LGBTQ families of various backgrounds. We heard from recently married couples. We heard a maybe 8 year old boy speak simple yet immensely powerful words about the humanity of his two moms. There was an emotional testimony from City Councilwoman Rebecca Kaplan. Aimee Suzara took the crowd by storm, debuting her poem "Dangerous" that was made for that moment in time (go to aimeesuzara.net to read it and see what else this amazing poet/educator/perfromer is up to!)). And there was much much more. I was proud to represent str8 black ally, and to evoke to power of the ally: Bio allies for Transfolks, Men and boy allies for girls and women, white allies for people of color (white allies that would intercept dialogue that would make people look at me and assume i voted yes on prop 8, etc). I also then presented a piece that was directed towards people of faith who interpret their sacred texts to disapprove of love between people of the same sex. I call it the Parable Of Empathy (forward liberally, but please ask permission before utilizing in a program or something):

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Parable Of Empathy

You, who love your God, Love your place of worship, love your community
Hear me.

Imagine that your religion, like all religions have been, is oppressed by a majority religion.

Imagine that this majority religion has a lot of power.

Imagine that the people of this majority religion very deeply believed that your ways were wrong, immoral, heathenlike. And though you love your ways and they are so right for you, it was wrong for them.

Imagine that they used their power to take away your places of worship that you so dearly love.

How would you feel?

How would you feel, knowing that instead of just loving their gods, they chose to take the time and energy to strike down how you love your God, strike down your place of worship, strike down your community?

How would you feel, knowing that the people of this powerful religion are people that you work with? Friends? Members of your family?

In your heart, you would know that not everyone in this powerful religion did this, but wouldn’t it be difficult to see the humanity of those who associate with people who assaulted your way of of living and loving?

Humanity
Is what we need to cultivate right now.
We all have a task up ahead.
And that is for everyone, on both sides
To figure out how to see the Humanness
In the other.


(c) rmw 2008
http://fem-men-ist.blogspot.com

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Yes yes y'all. The work towards affirming the humanity of all continues! And I have good feelings about these revolutionary baby steps we are making. Fight The H8! Liberate The Love!

Protest The H8. Historical Nationwide March This Saturday Coming To A City Hall Near You.

*This just in! Oakland is now on the map for the nationwide protest! This Saturday, 10:30am, Frank Ogawa Plaza! I proud to say I am one of the organizers, please hit me up with contacts for speakers, poets, conscious comedians, community leaders, etc at str8blackally@gmail.com! And for those who use Facebook, spread the word thru this link:
http://www.facebook.com/inbox/?ref=mb#/event.php?eid=43126081702
Coo? Lets do this!

The momentum of change continues people! This very well may be the largest protest in the history of the United States that was organized in **3 DAYS**. Protests have been rallied together to be occurring simultaneously in over 80 cities, all 50 states. And now its gone international, with allied protests in Canada, the UK, France, Puerto Rico, Japan, China...Wow. This is the next level right here people. The unfortunate passing of Prop 8 has sparked what might be one of the largest manifestations of the LGBTQ Civil Rights movement. I know I want to be a part of it. Go To Join The Impact (hosted by Wetpaint) to see where the protest nearest you is, and when it will happening to in order for it to be synchronized, all-city style.

Aw man, they took down the awesome timeline of response to JoinTheImpact.com... basically, how this movement happened! They are juggling servers with all the traffic they are getting, maybe it got lost. Luckily I left a window open with it on there, i cut and paste, check this out:

1. November 7^th – Launch (original Join The Impact blog)
   
2. 5 Hours post launch – First 10,000 visitors
3. Midnight on November 7^th – 20 cities organizing
4. November 8^th (Afternoon)– Thanks to the help of organizers, we made CNN’s iReport.
5. November 8^th (Evening) – Our site hit 35K visitors
6. November 9^th (Morning) – 30 cities organizing
7. November 9^th (Afternoon) – We got the attention of ParezHilton.com
8. November 9^th (Evening) – The tipping point – Traffic jumped to 50K visitors/hour. With the help of Hostdango.com, we immediately switched to a new webhost (Generously donated by Hostdango!)
9. November 10^th 8am PST – Our initiative goes international! Now there are protests being planned around the world for the exact same minute on November 15^th!
10. November 10^th 10am PST – Hostdango shows even more generousity by upgrading us to an amazingly robust server to ensure that we can handle the traffic! That server goes live the morning of November 11^th!
11. November 10^th 11am PST – WetPaint.com enters the mix of local Seattle based companies donating time and services. Thanks to WetPaint, we now have an amazing Wiki to upload contact information and protest locations for every single city! They created a social site just for us: http://jointheimpact.wetpaint.com.
12. November 10^th 11pm PST – All 50 states have local organizers in over 80 cities!!!
13. We have had almost 1million visitors to the site since launch!

Incredible. History being made right here folks. I'm just waiting for the next revolutionary movement to step up, whats next??

In the meantime... Say No To H8! And Liberate The Love!

Just To Be Sure We Are Clear On Propositions, California...

NO on Props 4, 6, 8 & 9, YES on 2, 5 & 12, YES on OO, VV & WW.

This was well researched, only props N and NN are leaving us kinda going either way, but we gravitated towards Yes for N, and No for NN.

here are some resources so you can make your own decisions, though i know you trust me just fine :) See you in Obamaland next week!

http://www.cagreens.org/

http://www.sfbg.com/

http://igs.berkeley.edu/library/hot_topics/2008/Nov2008Election/index.html

http://oaklandea.com/

Wanda Sykes On Gay Marriage

**CONTAINS ADULT LANGUAGE/PROFANITY. IF UNDER 18, PLEASE CHECK OUT ONE OF THE OTHER POSTS. There's good stuff, truss me

Whooo! I didn't know that Wanda Sykes was this awesome! this is hilarious, and deals with the psychology around this issue with brilliance. Humor is definitely the way to get these kinda points across, kudos to her. I am also amped to see a prominent sista in the entertainment world take this on.

One of my favorite quotes that just says it all with undeniable simplicity: "if you don't believe in same-sex marriage... then DON'T MARRY SOMEONE OF THE SAME SEX!" You know?

Tribe 8: Vote NO on Proposition 8

I am proud to feature this PSA on my blog, featuring my multi-talented and kick-ass friend Leslie Mah (who is also my tattoo artist). Leslie Mah and Lynn Breedlove of the hard rockin Tribe 8 band deliver an important message. Its up to us to help ensure that archaic ideas that would deny millions of loving, consenting adults the right to get married do NOT get written into law.

This is a moment in time not too dissimilar from when social movements were galvanizing to topple oppressive miscegenation laws in this country, pushing the idea of illegal interracial marriage further into cultural obsolescence. Lets continue to evolve, shall we?

Also help out by donating to make sure that this and other messages get out to voters who have been deluged with lies (that if the discriminating Prop 8 doesn't pass then churches will be taxed, it will affect education... bald faced, desperate lies!!). See the Equality California site and the No On Prop 8 site for details.

Also be sure to vote No on 4, 6 & 9!!